>>Hi,
>>
>>Do you think the following two approaches of getting the last entry in the identity column always give the same result?
>>
>>
>>select IDENT_CURRENT( 'table_name' )
>>
>>
>>
>>select top 1 IdentColumn from table_name group by IdentColumn order by IdentColumn desc
>>
>>
>>And if yes, am I correct in assuming that the first method (using IDENT_CURRENT()) would be a faster way of getting the value?
>>
>>TIA.
>
>The correct way is to use OUTPUT clause of the INSERT command. The second best method is to use SCOPE_IDENTITY() function. All other methods should not be used.
>
>See this blog post
>
http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/03/25/sql-server-identity-vs-scope_identity-vs-ident_current-retrieve-last-inserted-identity-of-record/I was not talking of getting the value during the insert. My question was if at any point your application needs to know the last value (that could have been inserted 2 weeks ago), which method would be correct and faster.
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